Lazy Friday Links

I'll be reinstalling Windows today after catching some sort of virus from the Duke network. (A week or so ago I accidentally left a shared folder writable while working at the library, and I've been paying for it ever since.) So there probably won't be too many posts today.

Here's a few quick links, though, to tide us all over for the next few hours:

* The writer's strike has a blog.

* Kugelmass calls Žižek and his recent LRB article an embarrassment. I'm a little bit on the fence on this question. As far as I can tell, Žižek is right insofar as the politics of failure resistance clearly have failed—but perhaps (contra Žižek) we must make them work again rather than just calling the whole thing off. Here's Kugelmass:

Each of these posts manifests a remarkable faith in Zizek, as though these questions have answers, or at least as though what is unclear now may become lucid shortly. It is as though one is speaking about a brilliant, sometimes reticent friend. In the relative desert of American politics, when connections between politics and philosophy are so difficult to find, I have also thought of Zizek that way. But enough is enough. Solidarity is wasted on egotistical delusion, and so is the gentle work of asking questions. Let us ask each other these same questions: do we support the consolidation of power in Venezuela? Do we see evidence of resignation on the Left? Do our anxieties about power leave us paralyzed? As for Slavoj Zizek, his very headlines have become unconscious, unsettling echoes of the slogans in 1984. Let us part ways with him until he once again becomes sane, and faithful to the unfinished work of philosophy, rather than to his besetting fantasies of a vanguard capable of putting a point on his arrogance.

* Via Bookninja, a judge in New York has ruled what makes a poem.

“A poem sometimes possesses rhyme or meter, though this is not necessary,” Keenan wrote. “A poem is typically free from the usual rules of grammar, punctuation and capitalization.” In a footnote, he cited testimony that before “World War Two, a poem almost always had rhyme or meter.” Now, “the popular definition of poem has become much more lenient.”

* And, finally, a brief history of the Mario Brothers. If that's not enough for you, Slate's Chris Suellentrop pays homage to the lost sequel of Super Mario Brothers.

See you in a few glorious hours.